2023-04-27 16:02:18
The Court of Audit recently expressed its concern about the fear of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) among implementing organizations. Implementation of government tasks is regularly hampered because organizations such as the Tax and Customs Administration and the Education Inspectorate see the GDPR as an obstacle to data exchange. The citizen suffers from this. A major stumbling block is a lack of confidence in the quality of privacy technology.
That confidence was recently dented again when a major data breach affected a large number of organisations. Such as The parole reported, the personal data of about 15,000 tenants of Stadgenoot may have been exposed. Bad, of course, but more damaging is the side effect: an even greater distrust of the public and the legislator when it comes to research that requires sensitive data.
Identifying patients
The reality is that more than ever there is a need for data exchange between organizations, including in the healthcare sector. In addition, people make their data from medical records available for data research on the basis of so-called data solidarity. The current practice is that patient data is stripped of characteristics that can directly identify the patient. Although this protects against direct recognition, it does not guarantee that sensitive information can be deduced from other characteristics.
The good news is that there is now privacy enhancing technologies that make it possible to perform analyzes on personal data. Data from various sources can be used, while sensitive data itself remains under lock and key. Name, patient number, age, gender and place of residence can be securely linked and analyzed without researchers seeing individual data.
High-end privacy technology
The healthcare sector is of course not the only domain where the problem of inadequate data exchange manifests itself. Numerous implementing bodies and local governments have data that can help other governments to serve citizens well and better fulfill social tasks. It is high time to make the most of this potential.
Organizations in the public and private sector would therefore do well not to become paralyzed by data leaks, but to invest in high-quality privacy technology. There is also a need for a much stronger legal foundation for the principled choice to combine and analyze data, using the latest technology. This means that the use of privacy technology must be explicitly mentioned in the law. The quality of that technology justifies such trust from the legislator.
Freya de Mink is Business Development & Healthcare Lead at Roseman Labs, Frank van Vonderen is Privacy, Data and Artificial Intelligence Consultant at Verdonck, Klooster & Associates
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